A peculiar catch-22 is happening within the music industry as we speak. The fact that vinyl sales have continued to increase year after year is all in all a good thing for those who thought the idea of artists and labels seeing any profits from their work was going by the wayside in the age of streaming. But given the demand for these boutique items—whether it’s a splattered edition pressing or an elaborate gatefold jacket—labels are now scrambling to figure out when they will be able to receive product from pressing plants working themselves to dust trying to keep up.
When I caught up with founder of the long running indie label Ba Da Bing Records, Ben Goldberg, we discussed these scheduling nightmares and how it can leave artists without records to sell as they are now beginning to book tours after a year and a half off the road. For example, at the time of our call the label was just receiving the fourth pressing of Cassandra Jenkins’ breakout album An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. But it was a photo finish, to say the least.
“People who ordered copies back in like March are finally going to be sent copies,” said Goldberg, when I reached him at the Ba Da Bing office. For the vinyl release of the record, Jenkins had the idea to do a different color for each pressing. But as the critics and fans threw praise that outweighed both of their expectations, they have been trying to figure out how many colors they could ask plants to whip up.
“We reached a point where it’s like, are there any other colors that you think would match the work? So we’ve started doing black vinyl on the fifth pressing and probably will be black from now on,” Goldberg said with a laugh. “It’s kind of crazy. There are some people who buy just different colors of the same record. So I could see what the appeal of it was. I mean, people could do different colored CDs. I don’t think anyone’s getting excited about that.”
Josh Terry of VICE reported back in July that the pandemic caused a surge in vinyl sales that skyrocketed 28.7 percent during the pandemic. As of right now, it’s a harsh reality that bands will be certainly missing bulky boxes of vinyl on tour. Whether or not fans will be signing up for pre-orders at merch tables and hoping that LPs will show up at their mailing addresses is yet to be seen. But it’s also unclear if people are going to abandon ship on vinyl as a physical medium altogether due to this current shortage.
“The thing is, when people go to the shows, you want that instance. You want to buy from the band and be able to talk to the band,” Goldberg explained. “So you want that personal interaction, but then you also want to be going home with something that you got from the show. I wonder if ballots are making people lose interest in wanting LPs. I would imagine that more people could go back to digital and then go to CD and just be like, ‘well, I can’t get the physical then fuck it. I’m just going to stream it.’”
Goldberg has been around the record industry for some time; first working as a publicist for two of American indie rock’s most storied labels—Merge and Matador—while getting Ba Da Bing off the ground in 1994. With all of his experience, he understands that in order to survive, you need to know how to adapt. As the label expanded from its humble beginnings in Leonia, New Jersey, he was able to move operations to their current office in the Brooklyn neighborhood Fort Greene. The label had found great success working with artists such as Beirut, Tune-Yards, Sharon Van Etten, and Six Organs of Admittance, to name a few, and has nurtured relationships with newer artists such as Jenkins, Slothrust, and Julie Byrne.
One of the key factors he believes that has drawn artists to working with him and his team at Ba Da Bing is that he doesn’t force his artists to do anything that feels unnatural or forced. Part of being a partner in this with the musicians Goldberg works with is sensing when an artist needs a label to step up and take care of the frivolous things. For Julie Byrne, it meant staying away from social media.
“My feeling is Julie Byrne has done an amazing job of conveying the kind of person she is through her press photos, through her interviews, through her album art, through her songs. You get a good sense of the person she is. She doesn’t need to be on Twitter. That’s not a part of who she is,” said Goldberg, adding, “Cassandra [Jenkins] is amazing online. She’s always posting stuff and she’s often very thoughtful and very funny. And she said very clever things. That’s good. That’s a very natural part of her. And what I want the label to be is I want to be able to have the artists on the label emphasize who they are, not who they should be or who you aspire to be, but who they are, and really convey them as individuals in a way that they’re comfortable with.”
It’s a refreshing approach from someone who understands what it takes to build something that lasts in a world that sets a heavy precedent on fleeting bits of vanity. But Goldberg assures; If slogging through slimy press or posting as your “online self” seems uncomfortable, it probably is. If a show seems too good to be true and over extends you on tour, then it most definitely is.
“A lot of times I’ve had a number we’ve had a number of artists say, ‘Do I have to play South by Southwest?’ and we’re like, ‘If you don’t want to, no. If you’re excited about doing it, go ahead. It’s rough, it’s difficult there. And it doesn’t mean that you’re like, there’s no guarantee with playing South by Southwest. But if you get excited by it, then definitely do it’” Goldberg said.
One of the joys that Goldberg has found from running a successful label, is that it gives him the ability to service the legacy of certain artists in ways that their needs were not being met in the past. While running Ba Da Bing, he has had the opportunity to reissue albums by the unsung folk musician Jackson C. Frank as well as to reissue the music of one of his biggest musical heroes; Mark Hollis and his game-changing group Talk Talk. Goldberg explains that getting access to those records was one of those once in a lifetime experiences that he couldn’t pass up on.
“The first classic record I did was for Talk Talk, which was my first reissue of a classic record,” said Goldberg about reissuing the band’s final album Laughing Stock and Mark Hollis’ eponymous solo album in 2011. “I ended up finding the person who was at Universal who handled licensing on vinyl reissues. I called them up and I said, ‘I’d like to do this’ and [they said] ‘okay, we’ll put you down for it.’ And seriously, a year and a half later, I got a phone call from someone saying ‘Hey, did you put your name down to license this Talk Talk record? Okay, well, you can license it.’ It was out of the blue. Somehow it eventually got to the right person and I was able to do it!”
As Ba Da Bing has filled their roster, Goldberg has also found time to sign artists to the label’s subsidiary Grapefruit Records which hosts more experimental music that he curates with musician Simon Joyner. That label includes releases by the exhilarating group 75 Dollar Bill and Dump, the solo project from Yo La Tengo’s James McNew. This decision to champion these kinds of artists has always been one that Goldberg feels has been worth the risk and what keeps him excited about the label after nearly 20 years.
“I didn’t want to do any specific type of music. I didn’t want to be known as a label that is a kind of music,” Goldberg said. “In college, I interned at Matador and I really admired Matador for doing a wide variety with different types of music. I wanted to do a little bit of everything. So I kind of intentionally wanted to do a really wide array of different types of music. You might not like everything that we put out, but at least you’ll know that it was curated in a way that it was, it was chosen because we like it.”